


it's better than yours

by dagwic



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 1970s, Arthur Pendragon Returns (Merlin), Crack Treated Seriously, I guess this is a song-fic but like, Lactose Intolerant Merlin, Milkshakes, Post-Battle of Camlann (Merlin), it's mostly just dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagwic/pseuds/dagwic
Summary: What was he doing working at Merlin's Milkshakes?Arthur was never coming back, Merlin had decided that for certain nearly a millennium ago, and looking at the lake every day did nothing to banish the thought of him from his mind.And he had never actually tried a milkshake — when he tried ice cream for the first time decades earlier, his stomach had felt the repercussions for days afterwards.orMerlin makes a milkshake and inadvertently fulfils the prophecy to bring the boys to the yard.
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	it's better than yours

**Author's Note:**

> but what if... a 00's popstar was a prophet...
> 
> this was supposed to be silly but then I took it too seriously, anyway enjoy this un-edited fever dream of a fic

Merlin wondered how he had ended up in a twenty-year-old's body behind a counter learning how to blend milkshakes. The white polo shirt that constituted his uniform was itchy around his neck, especially with the summer sweat from the lack of air-conditioning. The heat also happened to be particularly stifling in Avalon and the demand for cold drinks by the lake particularly unrelenting.

He was being shown the ropes by his new "manager", Gareth, a boy of only twenty three who had grown up in the area and worked at the bar for a couple years now. As the boy took him slowly through all the procedures involved in food preparation hygiene, Merlin resisted the urge to snap and yell at him for being condescending.

It wasn't Gareth's fault.

He didn't know Merlin was over a thousand years old. That he had lived through more, seen more, learnt more than Gareth could ever understand. That, compared to him, Merlin was a fossil, a relic of a past civilisation that only survived by adapting into something unrecognisable, like a dinosaur's DNA mutated into a chicken's. That sometimes he fell asleep at night dreaming of spells to make him forget the lonely drone of immortality. The slow march towards yet more life.

The worst part about living forever was finding a job.

Sure, he'd been to university. He had spent the entire 18th century learning everything there was to know about science and philosophy and medicine. Of course, science had moved on — they had even put a man on the moon just a few years ago — but Merlin had done enough studying for one lifetime. And now he couldn't even put all that knowledge to practice because his qualifications were all crumbling in his attic (and 250 years old).

Applying for jobs was practically impossible without retaking school every few decades, which Merlin quickly found was intolerable. This restricted his job searches to the low-skilled sectors of society.

He didn't mind so much really. For centuries, there were jobs as a servant to whichever nobles wanted the peasants to do their bidding and since the turn of the 20th century, he found a natural home in the service industry.

So, what was he doing working at Merlin's Milkshakes?

Arthur was never coming back, Merlin had decided that for certain nearly a millennium ago, and looking at the lake every day did nothing to banish the thought of him from his mind.

And he had never actually tried a milkshake — when he tried ice cream for the first time decades earlier, his stomach had felt the repercussions for days afterwards.

But eventually, Merlin had grown tired of restaurants. Cooking in them was exhausting and he felt like he was barely learning anything. Serving in them was fine, though his choice to keep his younger body came along with its clumsiness and the constant threat of being fired.

Then the wars came.

It wasn't that Merlin didn't understand the importance of fighting. But he was an old man, whether he looked like one or not. He had fought enough battles for any one man. He had killed enough.

The aftermath of the war left Merlin in his real body, aching and sagging, for decades. He couldn't bear to go back to his mission to stay in the food industry, and he couldn't bear to think about how he had done nothing to help so many people in need. But he had always been selfish, really.

He wandered for years, from place to place, aimlessly. He must have walked the length and breadth of Albion, as if he was searching for something to fulfil him, make him whole again. Then, in the year of 1973, he found Avalon again and that small part of his chest that had been longing for something was finally content.

It wasn't home — nowhere had been home for a very long time — but it was damn near close enough.

So, milkshakes. Why not? They were harmless and frivolous and the hum of the milkshake machine drowned out his constant stream of regret-tinged memories.

Eventually, once Gareth had made a few more jokes about Merlin's name and reassured himself that the place wouldn't burn to the ground, he needed to complete one final check before he left to sit in the sun on the lake's edge.

He ordered one of the jumbo milkshakes and watched closely as Merlin scrambled around to put together all the various components involved (which were just a milkshake, some whipped cream and assorted toppings).

As the machine whirred and he prepared the glass, he felt the whispers of magic around his heart. He brushed it off as just a phantom feeling — he was near Avalon and had spent the last few hours reliving that moment with Arthur in the grass, he was bound to imagine what magic used to feel like. It was probably just the vibration of the machine.

Then the machine stopped and he poured out the liquid. But his hands were shaking terribly. The mixture barely spilled over the side of the glass but the feeling left him uneasy. He felt a lurch of adrenaline in his chest, as though someone was pulling his heart up into his throat.

As he tried to press the lever of the canister of whipped cream, he found that his fingers were too numb to exert any pressure. He dared not look up at Gareth to see his reaction, he knew he could spray some goddamn whipped cream if he needed to and yet here he was, with the weakness of a trembling child.

His frustration grew and grew as he tried to squeeze his hand together and only little spurts of cream were leaving the dispenser. He tried to press harder and harder, until finally he felt a sensation he hadn't felt in what seemed like forever.

The windows of the milkshake bar all smashed as Merlin felt his magic rush from his fingers to help him for the first time in over a thousand years, like water bursting from a dam. It wrapped invisibly around his body and his mind and his heart as he felt the greatest sense of calm since Arthur's death.

It was as though the universe and the gods themselves were sighing in relief.

Eventually, he opened his eyes to see that the whipped cream had sprayed all over the counter in front of him, though the glass itself was mostly spared from the onslaught. Gareth was gone, as were many of the lakegoers, it seemed. He could hardly blame them — given how far the broken glass had been flung, it must have been a powerful explosion.

He could still feel the tingling in his hands, but it wasn't from shaking anymore. His fingertips were buzzing with the exaltingly incredible sensation of magic, _his_ magic, with the fullness and vibrancy it hadn't had in centuries. He felt the earth sway beneath his feet and the stars fly overhead and the blades of grass by the hill and the midges in the air. It was dizzying, exhilarating, intoxicating.

Merlin had been on this earth for over a thousand years but it finally felt like he was _living_.

He sat down on the counter facing away from the lake, just admiring how his body hummed and purred with joy as he produced little sparks of magic and butterflies around himself, spells which only recently would have left him bed-bound for months out of exhaustion.

He didn't even look as he reconstituted the front window with a flick of his wrist and spontaneously invented a new spell to play music from his own memories, without the need for a record player. He sat on the counter, surrounded by whipped cream, swinging his legs, and humming along to some song he'd gotten stuck in his head.

From behind him, he heard the ding of the bell above the door and the slow dripping of water onto the linoleum floor.

 **Merlin** : "There's a sign outside. You gotta dry yourself off before you come in."

Then a voice rang out that he hadn't heard in forever.

 **Arthur** : "Looking at the state of this place, I'd say you have bigger issues than a bit of water. I know you were an awful servant, but this is horrendous even for you."

He spun his head around to see a completely soaked, panting, chainmail-clad, broad-shouldered, golden-haired _Arthur_. Not a day older than when Merlin had carried his body onto a boat just a few hundred yards away. Time had allowed him to forget many things, but that face wasn't one of them. Merlin had always wished he could draw — his time spent in Florence in the 17th century had made it clear that it wasn't for him — so he could capture Arthur's likeness in something other than his own mind.

And now he was _here_. Right there. With his stupid hair wet against his forehead and his gorgeously pale blue eyes and his hands pinned to his knees to allow him to catch his breath. Had he been running?

 **Merlin** : "Y- You came back?"

 **Arthur** : "We did."

 **Merlin** : "We?"

Arthur gestured behind him.

 **Arthur** : "I ran ahead."

Merlin didn't know what to say. _I missed you_. _I didn't think you would come back. Who else is there? My life has been nothing without you._

Instead, he said nothing. Arthur slowly managed to stand upright and looked straight at Merlin, who was still sitting on the counter-top, overwhelmed at the sight before him.

 **Arthur** : "I know. I know."

He didn't need to ask what Arthur knew. It was everything. _He knows everything._

When they finally hugged, Merlin didn't ever want to let go.

 **Arthur** : "Really though, Merlin. This is a terrible excuse for a milkshake."

 **Merlin** : "It's better than yours."

Arthur loosened the hug a bit to look Merlin in the face, still clutching onto his arms.

 **Arthur** : "What's that supposed to mean?"

 **Merlin** : "I'd like to see you try to make a milkshake right in the middle of a magical epiphany. And the milkshake's fine, actually. The whipped cream is just an extra."

He looked thoroughly unconvinced and gestured to the counter behind Merlin.

 **Arthur** : "Is that why you put it everywhere except in the glass?"

 **Merlin** : "Since when do you know anything about milkshakes anyway, _sire_?"

Arthur's eyebrow raised in challenge.

 **Arthur** : "What did you think I was doing in Avalon, Merlin? Twiddling my thumbs?"

Before Merlin could answer, he heard the ding of a bell and the shuffling of several pairs of feet.

 **Gwaine** : "Actually, princess, I seem to remember quite a lot of thumb twiddling from you."

Just in front of the door, he saw Gwaine, Lancelot, Percival and Elyan, all decked in their chainmail and capes and all dripping wet.

Merlin's heart also leapt at the sight of his friends. He had to admit that after a few centuries, he had mostly stopped thinking about them in his recollections of Camelot, other than to think about how he was responsible for their deaths. His attention was mostly focused on Arthur — he had many friends over the years, but only ever one king.

 **Lancelot** : "You should have seen him after you arrived in Avalon. He was pacing. Constantly."

Arthur pouted.

 **Arthur** : "Was not."

 **Leon** : "Was too. In his defence, Merlin, you took your sweet time before you started working here. We even called it Merlin's Milkshakes and it took you nearly 6 months. Arthur was ready to kill the Triple Goddess."

 **Merlin** : "Well I'm sorry if I _disappointed_ anyone. How was I supposed to know that making a milkshake would bring you back?"

Lancelot glared at Gwaine.

 **Lancelot** : "You would have known if _someone_ had sent the prophecy to the right decade. In 30 years, there'll be a very catchy but ultimately baffling song about milkshakes. At least you got there in the end."

Merlin realised he was still half-embracing Arthur, who had taken to resting his head on Merlin's shoulder as they had been speaking. He patted his _king_ , who was finally _here_ , on the back and extricated himself to greet his other friends.

As he pulled away from the spine-breaking bear hug he received from Gwaine, he noticed a smirk on his face.

 **Gwaine** : "So are you gonna get your guests something to drink? Or do we have to do it ourselves?"

 **Merlin** : "I could teach you... but I'd have to charge."


End file.
